C. notes that this book is the fruit of revisions to a doctoral thesis completed at Padua in 2010 (p. vii). Comparison of the two texts shows that those revisions were full and thoughtful, but the book still reads like a thesis. Most significantly conclusions are scarce. A 54-page bibliography is followed by an 86-page introduction, then a translation and text, 110 pages of commentary, and a 5-page index nominum et rerum.
The introduction includes sections on the title of the Ludus septem sapientum, the dedication to Pacatus (in a short footnote at the end of the section, C. rejects outright the important study of Pacatus’ life and career offered by Turcan-Verkerk, whose name is misspelt), school poetry, the seven sages in the theatre, ‘Aspects of the work attributable to the iconographic tradition’, the iambic senarii of the Ludus, and sections on the seven sages in antiquity (up to the eighth century) and in the Renaissance.
C. says that Ausonius’ dedication of the work to Pacatus is full of clichés (p. lxxiii), which is true if she means that Ausonius praises the dedicatee and downplays the quality of his work. She ignores the original aspects of the dedication, and finds it unlikely that Ausonius privileged the response of his readers, as suggested by ‘Nugent 2000’ (p. lxxvi, where she means Nugent 1990). Needless to say, C. does not find it interesting that Ausonius compares Pacatus to the scholars Aristarchus and Zenodotus.
Anyone using Ausonius’ text will thank C. for a detailed commentary. The notes are at their strongest when she is describing the context of earlier literature, philosophy, and the culture of Greece and Rome. For example, long notes are dedicated to what we know about each of the seven sages. In general, C. views Ausonius through the lens of Classical Antiquity, as is clear from the opening words of the introduction, ‘At the end of the 4th century, when the theatrical genre of Latin literature had already, a long time ago, exhausted its own productivity’ (p. lxv). Elsewhere, the movement from Classical to Medieval is viewed as a loss (p. xcv). Unsurprisingly, C. does not have much to say about the poetry of Ausonius. At one point she says that the expression sententiam peragere (found in line 134) is ‘absent in poetry’ (p. 76). For the literary qualities of Ausonius’ work, she twice cites a single page from R. Green's introduction to The Works of Ausonius (pp. lxv and lxxii). Otherwise she seems to distrust literary analysis. Parallel passages and sources are often cited in the commentary without explanation (for example in the notes to lines 1, 3–4, 5, 6, 7 and 9–10). In any case, C.'s work may facilitate further study of Ausonius’ drama, to set it more fully within his literary and social context and to lay out what is original and even imaginative in his lines. For that we can thank C., and for the scholarly labour involved.
On pp. cliii–cliv, C. lists her departures from Green's 1999 OCT edition. Green is not given to reckless conjectures, but C.'s text is considerably more conservative. Of 31 differences, C. reverts from a modern conjecture to the manuscript reading 23 times. C. proposes one change of her own, a lacuna before and after line 108 (Green had enclosed the line within daggers and proposed a lacuna only after it). In 9 of these 31 passages, C. admits hiatus where earlier editors had amended the text. In emphasising that Ausonius modelled his iambic senarii on Plautus and Terence, C. depends on earlier work résuméd in M. Deufert, Textgeschichte und Rezeption der plautinischen Kömodien in Altertum (2002). C. is probably right that Ausonius allowed hiatus occasionally (pp. cxiv–cxviii), but not in all nine of these cases. In line 123, C. prints laudat Solonem, Croesŭm || ĭn ămicis habet, with hiatus after the first short of an already uncommon tribrach, where Peiper had conjectured inde in amicis. Odder is the unnecessary hiatus marked in line 213, tempus me || abire, ne sim molestus: plaudite (p. cxviii). In line 53, C. admits an unmetrical trochee in the first foot without explaining why she rejects Green's easy transposition. To summarise, individual passages could reward further attention, but C.'s book can now be consulted alongside Green's judicious text and commentary.
